Detroit Attorney Victor Hanson, a prominent litigator of high-profile cases involving major maritime incidents and also a founder of a forerunner to today’s National Football League Players Association (NFLPA), died May 26 of a heart attack. He was 80. 
Hanson in 1973 established Labor’s International Hall of Fame to afford recognition to the founders and heroes of the union movement as well as to educate today’s workers and public about the struggles and sacrifices that made today’s labor movement possible. Although not a union member himself, he did a great deal of work as a lawyer for unions including the SIU, the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific, the Teamsters, the American Guild of Variety Arts and many building-trades unions. Hanson was involved in cases relating to the following maritime disasters, some of which claimed the lives of Seafarers: the Noronic in 1949 with 119 dead; the Andrea Doria in 1956 with 52 dead; the Carl D. Bradley in 1958 with 33 dead; and the Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975 with 29 dead.
Byron Kelley, retired SIU vice president Great Lakes and current Labor’s International Hall of Fame president, knew Hanson well. “He was really a man’s man, and he was always a staunch supporter of the Seafarers,” Kelley said. “Vic was quite a guy. He was bright, he was politically active, and he’ll certainly be a viable candidate for Labor’s International Hall of Fame, which he founded.”
Hanson’s nephew, Robert Edick, told the Detroit Free Press that his uncle “was very active with union politics…. He was very much a people person.”
Born in northwest Detroit, Hanson was a 1940 graduate of Redford High School. Following graduation, he joined the U.S. Marine Corps where he served as a paratrooper. An injury suffered during a jump, however, forced him to do the majority of his service in San Diego. After his 1943 discharge as a private, Hanson returned to Detroit. There he enrolled in Wayne State University and began a decades-long relationship with the school.
He earned his bachelor’s and law degrees there. Hanson played guard for the Wayne State Tartars football team from 1945 to 1946 and later became an active member of the Gas House Gang, a club of the school’s former football players.
His gridiron fervor served him well in the 1950s when he represented a Detroit Lions football player who had injured his knee and wanted worker’s compensation. During that time, players were considered independent contractors and, therefore, were not entitled to benefits. Hanson won the case—securing weekly payments of $33 for 500 weeks—for the hobbled athlete, who was making $13,000 annually.
Hanson also is credited with playing a key role in changing the status of professional football players for good when he founded an association which essentially served as a union. That organization was a predecessor to the NFLPA.
Hanson raised money for Detroit’s St. Francis Home for Boys and Most Holy Trinity Church and was active in the Democratic Party. He also founded Hands That Help, a charity that distributes clothing and blankets to veterans’ homes.
He is survived by a stepdaughter, Loralee Coomes; three sisters, Evelyn Hanson, Beatrice Kuhl and Rose Marie Berry; and two grandsons.
###
Printer Friendly Page